ABSTRACT
China claims indisputable sovereignty over the Paracel Islands and their adjacent waters based on several factors, including historical evidence, economic development, effective administration, and international recognition. Vietnam also claims sovereignty over all of the Paracels based on historical evidence, economic development, effective administration, and international recognition. China claims its sovereignty over the Paracels is valid based on its extensive and continuous display of authority over the archipelago following its discovery during the Han Dynasty. The discovery of the islands vested China with an inchoate title, which China perfected by its exercise of authority over the archipelagoes throughout history. These extensive activities, which include government‐sponsored exploitation of the islands, repeated naval patrols to the region, and numerous scientific surveys of the islands, demonstrate effective administrative control and sovereignty over the Paracels. Vietnamese sovereignty over the Paracel Islands is well-founded in both history and law. A broad range of actions taken by Vietnamese and French authorities during the colonial period provide incontrovertible evidence of Vietnam’s comprehensive, continuous, peaceful, and uncontested effective control of the Paracels. Vietnamese sovereignty was first established between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. During the eighteenth century, Vietnam effectively asserted sovereignty over the Paracels by establishing a government‐sponsored company to exploit and manage the resources of the archipelago. The annexation of the islands in the nineteenth century was followed by peaceful, effective, and continuous administration of the islands by successive Nguyen dynasties until the advent of the French colonial period. France effectively occupied the Paracels in the 1930s but was displaced by Japan during the Second World War between 1941 and 1945. When Japan was forced to relinquish her claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands following the 1951 San Francisco Peace Conference, sovereignty of the islands reverted to France. Thereafter, French and Vietnamese actions clearly demonstrate an effective and active presence in the archipelago, as well as a peaceful exercise of sovereignty over the islands. Following the French withdrawal from Indochina in 1956, South Vietnam (and subsequently a united Vietnam) effectively administered and asserted sovereignty over the islands, even after China illegally occupied Woody Island in 1956 and the entire archipelago in 1974. The first demonstration of Chinese sovereignty over the Paracels did not occur until 1909, two centuries after Vietnam had legally and effectively established its title to the islands. China’s illegal actions in 1956 and 1974 were a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and do not provide China with a legal basis to claim sovereignty over the Paracels.
